David McGrath: Separating Notre Dame and St. Patrick

Sunday

Mar 17, 2013 at 12:01 AM

By DAVID McGRATH, Guest Columnist

I am conflicted whenever the 17th of March rolls around.

My disenchantment is partly due to my first impression of St. Patrick's Day in conglomeration with my family heritage and all things Irish -- an impression I got on a blustery day in Chicago decades ago.

Early that morning, however, I was as joyous as a 6-year-old on his way to Disney World. I was 6, but Disney World had yet to be built. Instead, I was headed to a Notre Dame football game, privileged to have been chosen over my five brothers by Uncle Ed.

Barely three months into first grade, I did not know exactly what a Notre Dame was. After all, it is a foreign phrase (Our Lady). And there was no college football on any of the three channels on our black-and-white TV in the 1950s. And I had only a vague notion about college, as some sort of school for kids infinitely more advanced than those in Sister Killian's classroom at St. Bernadette.

But how I loved Notre Dame! How could I not? The "Mc" in our surname called for allegiance. There was an ND pennant tacked to the wall in our upstairs bedroom. My uncles and brothers roared about the Fighting Irish over Thanksgiving dinner.

And at the St. Patrick's Day parade, my father had lifted me onto his shoulders as a marching band played the Notre Dame fight song. While my mother, though born Gertrude Cichoszewski, used to sing "Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral" to us every afternoon at nap time.

So finally getting to go to Notre Dame was akin to visiting Riverview or Santa's Village. Only it promised to be even better, since you had to drive hours to get there in Uncle Ed's Buick LeSabre.

Of course, as with nearly everything that's freighted with high expectations, that Saturday proved to be a letdown. The worst day of my life, actually. Mind you, it was a life of only 6 years to that point.

But the trip to South Bend, Ind., turned out to be an all-day headache. For one thing, I discovered I disliked crowds. A bunch of kids at a carnival is fun. But thousands of men in heavy wool coats, smoking cigarettes and shuffling in long lines, when you're the only kid, who can see nothing but knees and shoes and boots, was mostly what I remember. And Uncle Ed was not practiced in how to hold a kid's hand, or keep him buoyed and unjostled.

When we got to our seats, the Notre Dame business was far below and a world away. I ascertained figures in helmets running about, but the distance was such that I could not distinguish individuals. Just blotches of color moving from one part of the grid to the next.

I was fuzzy on the rules of the game and wasn't further enlightened by the detectable action below, like tadpoles darting at intervals in a milky pond.

The only clear picture I have in my memory is of a kickoff near the end of the game. The ball rose above the chaos, high in the air, nearly at eye level. After all the tedium and confusion so far below, the brown distinct oval floating majestically against the blue sky, was the day's single moment of clarity. But it was too late and too cold for exhilaration.

For I was wearing ordinary leather tie shoes and thin socks. My feet grew cold immediately when we arrived. Numb by halftime. Throbbing at the start of the third quarter. Into the fourth, I was sure I could never walk again.

I suppose I could Google the dates of ND home losses in 1955 and discover what the temperature had been in Indiana. But I purposely refrained from doing so, dreading to see any more compelling arguments for filing a lawsuit against Uncle Ed. Why and how I did not succumb to frostbite must have something to do with my tender age and diver's reflex that kicked in to spare my skin tissue. I was too sorrowful -- on the brink of crying frozen tears -- to ask him to leave, to seem ungrateful, to interrupt his concentration on the game, though ND lost.

I had absolutely no defense. I was 6. I wanted my Mom.

The trauma, the pain, the sadness, that interminable ride home, all of it notwithstanding, there are other things Irish, more important, that I commemorate on St. Patrick's Day:

My father-in-law Tom Dunne, the storyteller. He had a hundred, each one ending with his ringing laughter.

Uncle Don's insane generosity. Don McGrath would attend family birthdays and confirmations and hand out $10 bills to all his nephews and nieces. Today, that would be equivalent to passing out $100 bills to every child.

My Uncle Bill's raunchy but colorful jokes, and not treating us like kids.

And Mary Helen Ryan, the head clerk at my first school. "You come again unprepared and you'll get run over." The most blunt and honest person I'd ever met, and later the most fiercely loyal.

St. Patrick's Day, I learned over the years, is not about shamrocks and derby hats or green beer and Notre Dame. It is about something unique associated with the Motherland: the courage to never hide your love, no matter the form it takes. And that's reason enough to celebrate in any culture.

Port Charlotte's David McGrath teaches English at Edison State College.